My -almost- New Carapace

This is a RE-Post, originally posted on September 7, 2010 by Kame.

Although my scute shedding is not perfect yet, but the last 6 scutes are so hard to let go, so I decided to write this post anyway🙂 it’s already 90% shedding after all.

Look at the picture bellow!

On the left, you can see my old carapace. The color was dark brown with thick black lines and has no clear pattern. The middle one was when half of my scutes had been shed. You can see clearly how different my new scutes to my old ones. I was on my mom’s bed when that picture was taken. She needed a picture of me sleeping like human…hehehe silly idea! On the right, yeaaa my new carapace…well, actually my new scutes🙂 the color becomes a bit green-brown and the black lines are thinner…and I have cute pattern on my scute now. You can see some soft green line curving along the scutes.

Now, look at this picture below! It’s a clear shot of my scutes. You can easily see the difference between the old scute with the new scute. You can also see that pattern of my new scutes is visible under my old scutes.

Beside color and pattern, the changes also happen on the shape of my carapace. The carapace with the new scute has less pyramiding effect. On top of the carapace, there are still bumpy areas but not as bad as it used to be. On the side scutes, you can see that my new scutes don’t look as pointy as they used to be. They have become round now.

My plastron also changed, the color becomes softer and the black pattern is changing direction.

Most water turtles that bask often will continue to regularly shed their scutes their entire life, it’s a cleaning process. Turtles that rarely shed their scales are one’s that rarely bask such as musk turtles. Box turtles and tortoises rarely if ever shed their scutes once they have reached full size. Where did she get this turtle? That is literally one of the worst cases of shell deformation I have ever seen, a turtle shell is never supposed to look like that. Not to mention the white on the bottom of the shell, in which it looks like the layer was scraped off, revealing bone underneath. How did this happen? It’s as if that poor guy spent years with a horrible diet and poor environmental conditions.